Saturday was a big day for high school coaches, who gathered at various locations around the state for regional meetings of the Texas High School Coaches Association.

Most of the coaches from the Big Country and Concho Valley were gathered in Abilene at PrimeTime Entertainment Center. Cooper football coach Todd Moebes, the head of the region for THSCA, organized the event to be able to update the area’s coaches on the current state of the THSCA and to share messages from various speakers.

One of the speakers Moebes was able to line up for the event was Dr. Susan Elza, the director of athletics for the University Interscholastic League, which on Thursday announced its biennial realignment results.

Before the event, Dr. Elza took some time to speak with the Reporter-News on this week’s events, new mapping technology used to help with the realignment and some of the criticism the organization received — most notably from San Angelo Central coach Brent Davis, whose squad was sent to a Fort Worth-area district with Abilene High.

Q: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. You’ve had a nice week, haven’t you?

A: “Well, it’s been good. When you have that many schools that you’re trying to place into districts, you’re going to have some people that are not going to like the decisions that are made.”

Q: When you look at realignment as a whole, West Texas is always a travel-burdened area. How difficult is it for the UIL to keep it together?

A: “It’s difficult because of the disbursement of schools and the travel burdens that they have within that. Whether its 6A, 5A, 4A or whatever, they’re going to have some travel in there. What we are trying to do is land on the least amount of travel and that part is tough. I can remember a day when Interstate 35 was the dividing line between Region I and Region II. That day is far gone, and the growth of our schools is what changed that.”

Q: This year was the first year that the UIL has gone with the new method of using mapping technology as opposed to the tried-and-true way of rubber bands on a map. Do you feel like that helped with the travel concerns?

A: “I don’t think that it lifted that burden, but it allowed us to have accurate mileage, and the unique thing about the mapping system that we used is that it can calculate travel time based on the time of day. We were legitimately running numbers, plus travel time and the time that our schools would be traveling in a typical Tuesday-Friday schedule. It just gave us data that we had never had before at our fingertips, and when you get to having to make a decision of sending someone east or west, we are going to end up needing to land on the cumulative mileage for that district on the best number. It really made our process more efficient and more succinct. Again, we had the data from a program that was built and designed to do that.”

Q: Wylie is a good example with how it is going from Canyon to Lubbock to Wichita Falls. That has to be hard for the UIL to do with the new split divisions in 5A, doesn’t it?

A: “That looked different in 5A because in my career I’ve been in school districts that are 4A, 5A and 6A, and the amount of time that I’ve spent in 5A, you’re looking at that map thinking you’re going to lasso in a school but then realize they’re a different division. It looked completely different, and I think for some of our coaches and athletic directors the light finally came on for some of them over the split conference adding more travel for football. It’s been interesting.”

Q: One thing that has always intrigued me is that the best-kept secret in all sports, regardless of level, is UIL realignment. How do y’all keep it a secret as to where teams are going to wind up?

A: “We have been getting that question a lot. You’re sworn to secrecy when you step your foot into that map room, and we don’t have a high volume of staff that goes in there. But for the staff that does, we all know that it’s an unspoken vow that you don’t talk about it. When people ask about it, it’s an easy answer now because everybody knows you can’t answer those questions. You think about the deep history of our process, you definitely don’t want to be the one that breaks that history, and I think that a lot of people are very respectful of it because it’s been in place so long. You would be surprised that you don’t have a lot of people trying to purge you for information on what district that they are going to be in.”

Q: Coach Davis really poured some gasoline on a fire this week, for lack of a better term, with his comments to the San Angelo Standard-Times. That’s how a lot of West Texas has felt over that last decade, especially with Abilene High going back-and-forth the last 12 years. What does the UIL have to say in response to his comments?

A: “Number one, I’ve talked to Coach Davis since then and he’s a man that not only myself, but a number of coaches and our UIL staff, have a deep, deep respect for. He’s given back so much to kids, athletics and the game of football. I’ll tell you this, and (I knew) even before I joined the staff at the UIL, that’s an emotionally charged moment when you find out what district you’re in because you’re finding out who you’re competing against, and the livelihood of coaches is on the line for that. Second, for them, the travel that their kids are having to endure, no matter what or where we place them, I think it was just an emotionally charged conversation that he had with a reporter at a bad time. He is such a fine man that he apologized to me personally, to our Executive Director Dr. (Charles) Breithaupt, to Dr. Harris and I think that he did the right thing. He said, ‘I shouldn’t have done that’ and we respect that. Again, some of us do things at times that we wish we could pull it back, and that’s the way that he explained it to me. We are moving on and they’ve got an appeals process and I think that they will explore that option.”

Q: If San Angelo Central chooses to explore the appeals process, do you think that Abilene High coach Del Van Cox will explore it too?

A: “I don’t know. Just in my conversations with him and (Abilene ISD Athletics Director) Phil Blue, they were, in my mind, OK with going west and OK with going east. I’ve not heard a word from any of them. Coach Cox is one of my favorite coaches. I’ve not heard a word from them, nor have I seen anything in the paper (about an appeal). What I like about our process, and I’ll reinforce this, is that if they don’t like it, they have an option to appeal two rounds and we can always reconsider through that process where we place them.”